Just as Augustine set the stage for the next 1000 years of hermeneutics, working through Augustine's On Christian Teaching, puts the main issues of medieval hermeneutics on the table. The text is divided into four sections. The first offers the figurative meaning of words. In the second and third sections, Augustine turns to language, conventional signs as opposed to natural signs. The final section addresses the question of how we communicate the teachings of scripture. In the background (...) of Augustine's hermeneutics is the church father widely considered to be the first major Christian exegete, Origen. Origen's allegorical interpretations hold sway against those who dismiss the Bible as historically inaccurate. The model for the split between exegesis and theology is St. Thomas Aquinas. The differences between Aquinas's hermeneutics and Augustine's are not that great; most of the relevant views and debates were settled by the fall of the Roman Empire. (shrink)

O estudo trata a hermenêutica medieval sob o prisma da compreensão espiritual (intelectio spiritualis) de Joaquim de Fiore (1135-1202). Mostra que a noção de Trindade serve de base para retomar o método alegórico e o tipológico da tradição. Além disso, serve para propor o novo método por concórdia que, a nosso ver, culminará na maior inovação da leitura da história medieval. Entre os resultados, destacamos a continuidade imediata dessa hermenêutica com os franciscanos espirituais do século XIII e sua (...) influência direta na cultura luso-brasileira. Avaliamos também os estudos que tentam encontrar em Joaquim a gênese da filosofia da história hegeliana. Por fim, analisamos sumariamente a proposta de Gianni Vattimo, que encontra o novo sentido do cristianismo no legado joaquimita. The study deals with medieval hermeneutics from the viewpoint of spiritual comprehension (intelectio spiritualis) in Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202). The theologian shows that the notion of the Trinity serves as a basis for the rebuilding of the traditional allegorical and typological methods. Moreover, he proposes a new method by harmony which, in our view, culminates in an innovative reading of history. We highlight the immediate continuity of said hermeneutics with the Franciscans of the XIII century, and their direct influence on Luso-Brazilian culture. We also evaluate studies that attempt to find in Joachim the genesis for the Hegelian philosophy of history. Finally, we analyze Gianni Vattimo's proposal, which finds a new meaning for Christianity in the Joachimite legacy. (shrink)

Includes 28 illustrations of manuscripts, artwork, and architecture. Paperback edition ($16.95) not seen. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This paper addresses the Buddhist terms and concepts in early medieval Daoist texts in the light of hermeneutic and onto-hermeneutic theory with an example from the Benji Jing. It argues that onto-hermeneutic strategies of interpretation allow us to understand Daoist texts with Buddhist terms and concepts as an expression of complex and creative philosophical thoughts without losing track of the essence of Daoism and thus as Daoist philosophy in its own right.

"The origins of what might be called 'the dynamic relation between metaphysics and hermeneutics' and which forms the primary subject matter of the present volume are buried in the mists of history. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is fully visible at the point where the Stoic allegorical technique that had developed during the Hellenistic era of antiquity was adopted by the Platonists. How much further back the twofold root of metaphysics and hermeneutics can be traced remains an open question, given (...) that the problem itself is of a hermeneutical and perhaps even metaphysical nature, and given that we can never escape from this circularity. The thirteen essays in this volume all in various ways to the understanding of the chosen topic. When the first essays were written, the topic itself was only partially articulated, whereas some of the later pieces were composed with a more conscious awareness of its ramifications. For this reason, it seemed best to supplement the original texts with an introduction that is more fully developed than would normally be the case with a collective volume and indeed adopts a certain meta-critical stance"--. (shrink)

This book presents novel formalizations of three of the most important medieval logical theories: supposition, consequence and obligations. In an additional fourth part, an in-depth analysis of the concept of formalization is presented - a crucial concept in the current logical panorama, which as such receives surprisingly little attention.Although formalizations of medieval logical theories have been proposed earlier in the literature, the formalizations presented here are all based on innovative vantage points: supposition theories as algorithmic hermeneutics, theories (...) of consequence analyzed with tools borrowed from model-theory and two-dimensional semantics, and obligations as logical games. For this reason, this is perhaps the first time that these medieval logical theories are made fully accessible to the modern philosopher and logician who wishes to obtain a better grasp of them, but who has always been held back by the lack of appropriate ‘translations' into modern terms.Moreover, the book offers a reflection on the very nature of logic, a reflection that is prompted by the comparisons between medieval and modern logic, their similarities and dissimilarities. It is thus a contribution not only to the history of logic, but also to the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of language and semantics.The analysis of medieval logic is also relevant for the modern philosopher and logician in that, being the unifying methodology used across all disciplines at that time, logic really provided unity to science. It thus presents a unified model of scientific investigation, where logic plays the aggregating role. (shrink)

The Kirillov Monastery at White Lake in the far north of the Muscovite state was home to the greatest library, and perhaps the only secondary school, in all of medieval Russia. This volume reconstructs the educational activities of the spiritual fathers and heretofore unknown teachers of that monastery. Drawing on extensive archival research, published records, and scholarship from a range of fields, Robert Romanchuk demonstrates how different habits of reading and interpretation at the monastery answered to different social priorities. (...) He argues that 'spiritual' and 'worldly' studies were bound to the monastery's two main forms of social organization, semi-hermitic and communal. Further, Romanchuk contextualizes such innovative phenomena as the editing work of the monk Efrosin and the monastery's strikingly sophisticated library catalogue against the development of learning at Kirillov itself in the fifteenth century, moving the discussion of medieval Russian book culture in a new direction. The first micro-historical 'ethnology of reading' in the Early Slavic field, Byzantine Hermeneutics and Pedagogy in the Russian North will prove fascinating to western medievalists, Byzantinists, Slavists, and book historians. (shrink)

The lack of a local Jewish community did not prevent medieval Swedish clerics and lay people from being interested in Jews and Jewish questions. They bought, translated, read and preached from most of the available textual sources and thus spread the widely available views of the hermeneutical Jew: a cruel, stubborn and ugly person and at the same time a cipher for the entire Jewish people both in biblical times and today. This article gives an overview of the Latin (...) and vernacular manuscripts with anti-Jewish motifs and texts and shows that the main and most common textual models and motifs were available in Swedish libraries and collections, from legends via apocryphal texts to fake disputations – adding up to a relatively complete ‘hermeneutical Jew’. A focus was, as in the rest of Europe, on Passion-related piety, which was the most common form of piety in the late Middle Ages – and usually connected with distinct anti-Jewish features. The fact that we can establish direct and indirect textual and narrative lines of tradition between the medieval codices and modern printed booklets of the nineteenth century proves the long-lasting intelligibility of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Sweden – developed and spread completely independently from the Jewish minority. The medieval perspective thus adds a much-needed nuance to the debate about antisemitism in the North: it did not need any actual Jews; it simply made up its own, based on the general Christian tradition. (shrink)

Reacting against the turn to transcendence that heavily characterized the medieval worldview, the modern worldview is fundamentally exemplified by a threefold turn to immanence, consisting of a subjective turn, a linguistic turn and an experiential turn. Language plays a pivotal role here since it mediates between the subjective and the experiential. Ricoeur’s treatment of metaphor, significantly laid out in his The Rule of Metaphor, is crucial in bringing about this linguistic turn that mediates the subject and its experience of (...) the world. Through an analysis of “seeing as” as a poietic reconfiguration of reality in the subject’s experience, language transforms and founds the world as a “being as.” What is disclosed in this interpretative transformation of reality is not simply an hermeneutical ontology but possibly—also through language—an hermeneutical axiology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle AgesMichael CalabreseRhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages, by Rita Copeland; xiv & 295 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, $64.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.In this deeply learned book, Rita Copeland studies the history of rhetoric and grammar and their shifting roles in the history of translation, commentary, and interpretation from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages. Copeland examines (...) the ideological nexus of history, authority, and power in which commentary and vernacular translation function. “Vernacular writing,” she says, can “authorize itself by taking over the function of academic discourse” (p. 8). Her book then traces the history of this “authorization” and this “dis-placement” of Latin sources by the increasingly academically privileged vernacular. All in all, Copeland tells the story of how medieval literary culture articulated its translatio studii by confronting and preserving its Classical inheritance and also developing a role for the vernacular as an active, creative agent in the production of authoritative works. [End Page 413]Ultimately “rhetoric” is the star of Copeland’s book, and in essence she is telling its Roman and medieval life stories. By “rhetoric” we are to understand critical academic language that points toward ethics and practical action. Throughout the Middle Ages every modification or appropriation of critical tools expands the role of commentary and adds new forms of interpretive invention to the translation process. As Copeland puts it, “The medieval practice of translation as a form of appropriation and substitution will be conditioned, as in Roman contexts, by rhetorical theories of invention” (p. 36).The hermeneutical costar is grammar, for as part of the complex appropriation of classical practice, medieval readers recoup the “debased” Roman category of grammar, so that by the time of Martianus Capella it can “claim for itself the whole compass of literary activity” (p. 56). As grammar expands its power, so does rhetoric, a civic Roman art which gets “revalued in terms of service to theology” (p. 59). Medieval commentary now “assumes the character of rhetorical performance” (p. 86) and takes on a “primary productive character,” as it “continually refashions the [studied] text for changing conditions of understanding” (p. 64). What is emerging from all these developments is a medieval translation theory—and practice—which is informed by both academic and practical, ethical goals, that is, a hermeneutics forged by the link of grammar and rhetoric.The rest of the book studies the shifting status and the evolving role of the vernacular in this medieval hermeneutical drama. Copeland addresses the Ovide moralisé and the French translations of the Consolatio, and then Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and Gower’s Confessio Amantis. We witness here how vernacular products take on authority by “inventing themselves” through authoritative discourse. In Gower’s Confessio we see the fusion of hermeneutics and rhetoric; the poem uses academic modes of discourse in the service of ethics or action. We thus see that by the late Middle Ages vernacular literature plays an authoritative role in the medieval translatio studii, as Gower seeks to “open the institution of learning to the widest possible audience and thereby empower it as a persuasive tool, leading to knowledge of the good” (p. 220). Overall, Copeland has told the story of the “leveling” of academic and vernacular discourse, so that the later, while not dispelling or overthrowing the former, can claim access to its traditional authority.Copeland’s prose is Latinate, at times pedantic and, at times, just plain Latin; reading the book can be a wearing experience. But it is all part of a history she knows in remarkable detail, a history that lies behind many assumptions we have about medieval ethical poetics. To have presented this history is a major scholarly feat. Copeland allows us to see medieval authors as both products and producers of methods of appropriation, imitation, conquest, and preservation—all strategies for “translating” the past and creating a present that can leave its intellectual mark on the future. One might now want to employ Copeland’s history of classical and medieval hermeneutics as a tool for [End Page 414] examining our own, contemporary academic rhetorics and for analyzing the “state of... (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, she also contextualizes contemporary developments (...) within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of Social Science will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)

Cajetan's treatment of analogy in De Nominum Analogia is well known as the most influential and sophisticated theory of a central issue in Thomistic philosophy. The late twentieth century saw that theory subject to a family of criticisms. If the critics are correct, Cajetan's analogy theory is also significant historically for exposing weaknesses latent in medieval semantic assumptions. According to the critics, the Aristotelian assumptions that words signify by means of discrete “concepts,” and that the meaning of propositions depends (...) on the significations of its component terms, cannot do justice to the complexity, variety, and flexibility of actual human discourse; in De Nominum Analogia they see the elegant structure of classical semantics collapsing under the pressure of analogical language. In this article, I examine these criticisms of Cajetan's analogy theory, and argue that, in light of both Cajetan's semantic principles and his hermeneutic practice, they fall short. The conclusion not only implies a defense of Cajetan's project, but clarifies the general philosophical alternatives available within the traditional Aristotelian semantic framework. (shrink)

Why does one say today that the hermeneutic problem begins with Schleiermacher? Is there not a Christian hermeneutic which from the time of the early church has sought to place the figures of the New Testament in an interpretative relation with the figures of the Old Testament? Is hermeneutical reflection also not in evidence in the Church Fathers? What of the theory of the “Four Senses of Scripture” from the medieval period, as has been so magnificently reconstructed by Henri (...) de Lubac? And was there not an ongoing hermeneutical debate at the time of the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation linking together the theological axiom “sola fide” and the hermeneutical axiom “sola scriptura,” the Counter-Reformation opposing this with the correlating of exegesis, tradition, and the magisterium? (shrink)

Why does one say today that the hermeneutic problem begins with Schleiermacher? Is there not a Christian hermeneutic which from the time of the early church has sought to place the figures of the New Testament in an interpretative relation with the figures of the Old Testament? Is hermeneutical reflection also not in evidence in the Church Fathers? What of the theory of the “Four Senses of Scripture” from the medieval period, as has been so magnificently reconstructed by Henri (...) de Lubac? And was there not an ongoing hermeneutical debate at the time of the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation linking together the theological axiom “sola fide” and the hermeneutical axiom “sola scriptura,” the Counter-Reformation opposing this with the correlating of exegesis, tradition, and the magisterium? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 126-127 [Access article in PDF] James Arthur Diamond. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. viii + 235. Paper, $20.95. In his text about the nature of Maimonidean text, Diamond shows us firsthand how the great medieval Jewish thinker's use of (...) biblical and rabbinic prooftexts brings life to each page of his Guide by having meaning rely ultimately on the reader's interpretive glance. Inviting us into his study with an epigraph by Rosenzweig on the integral role of quotation in Jewish medieval writing, Diamond concludes that a prooftext within Maimonides' great philosophical text, The Guide of the Perplexed, is "not merely a prop on which to hang certain philosophical propositions regarding God and his relationship to the creation but rather melds with the text to form an organic continuum of thought" (160). By showing how Maimonides has crafted a masterful "interplay of text and prooftext" (30), Diamond presents the Guide to us as "a bridge, drawing the student out of the philosophical text into the sacred texts and back again, dissolving the divide between the two in a perpetual hermeneutical crisscross" (31).Emphasizing the centrality of the role of the reader—and in particular, the reader engaged in an intertextual hermeneutic—in any appreciation of Maimonidean text, Diamond employs Ricoeurian language, speaking, for example, of how Maimonides' text, in its use of prooftexts whose efficacy lies in the reader's interpretive response, constitutes "a network of intersignification, thanks to which the isolated texts signify something else, something more" (40; quote from Ricoeur, "The Bible and the Imagination," 71). In particular, Diamond stresses how these hermeneutically charged prooftexts are used by Maimonides to penetrate through a range of—what are for Maimonides—metaphorical discourses about the Divine within the Jewish tradition. Ranging from straightforwardly anthropomorphic claims about God sitting or standing, to more subtly anthropocentric conceptions of the role of God in Providence, there are a host of biblical and rabbinic claims about God which Maimonides sees as metaphors—statements whose meanings are in no way worn on their sleeves, as it were. Mindful, though, of the potentially devastating effects of alerting all religious folk to the falsity of certain ways of thinking about God, Maimonides crafts his text—in particular, according to Diamond, in his use of intertextually pointing prooftexts—to beckon only the philosophically prepared readers to the real truths about God and Providence. These truths are neither spelled out in the prooftext nor in the further context from which said prooftext is pulled; rather, as Diamond explains, the truths emerge in the hermeneutical unfolding of text and prooftext, in the live process of the reader's intertextual investigation. In an encounter with Maimonides' Guide, intertextually pointing prooftexts thus enable a reader to fashion "a 'surplus of meaning' out of apparent semantic nonsense" (11; reference to Ricoeur's treatment of metaphor in his Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning).What is fresh, creative and new about Diamond's book is not that it alerts us to the presence of secret writing strategies in Maimonides' Guide which reveal unspoken truths about God. This idea in and of itself is quite well-rehearsed within Maimonidean scholarship. What is fresh, creative and new about Diamond's study is that, in its focus on the hermeneutical efficacy of prooftexts as central to that secret writing strategy, it actually walks us through the hermeneutical process in question, step by step, with a number of cases in point. And so, Diamond not only tells us that Maimonides uses prooftexts as a strategy for pointing careful readers to uncover unspoken truths about the Divine, but Diamond actually devotes a full-length study to showing how this works in a number of [End Page 126] concrete cases. Diamond actually engages in exegesis of Maimonides' Guide in this study of Maimonidean exegesis; he actually shows us how he thinks a number of prooftexts ought to be traced through. Using a number of Maimonidean prooftexts as his starting points, Diamond takes us from Maimonides' text... (shrink)

Responding to the interlocutors, Ricoeur, utilizing Kantian aesthetic theory, addresses the nature of the work of art, its universality and communicability, and explores its temporality — its ‘transhistoricity’ — by utilizing concepts derived from medieval philosophy, including ‘sempiternality’ and ‘monstration’. He expands on hermeneutics, defends it against charges of relativism, expatiates on the danger of aestheticism, and explains the value of mimesis in art. He explores the different art forms, focusing with Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne as a model of (...) the ‘ipseity’ of the artist; and he dwells particularly on the singularity of music and its ‘pathic’ moods. A discussion of literature culminates in an emphasis on the special importance of Holocaust texts. (shrink)

Late in his life, Hans-Georg Gadamer was asked to explain what the universal aspect of hermeneutics consisted in, and he replied, enigmatically, “in the _verbum interius_.” Gadamer devoted a pivotal section of his magnum opus, _Truth and Method_, to this Augustinian concept, and subsequently pointed to it as a kind of passkey to his thought. It remains, however, both in its origins and its interpretations, a mysterious concept. From out of its layered history, it remains a provocation to thought, (...) expressing something about the relation of language and understanding that has yet to be fully worked out. The scholastic idea of a word that is fully formed in the mind but not articulated served Augustine as an analogy for the procession of the Trinity, and served Thomas Aquinas as an analogy for the procession between divine ideas and human thought. Gadamer turned the analogy on its head by using the verbum interius to explain the obscure relation between language and human understanding. His learned interpretation of the idea of the inner word through Neoplatonism, Lutheranism, idealism, and historicism may seem nearly as complex as the medieval source texts he consulted and construed in his exegesis, but the profoundity of his insights are unquestioned. In unpacking Gadamer's interpretive feat, John Arthos provides an overview of the philosophy of the logos out of which the _verbum interius_ emerged. He summarizes the development of the _verbum _in ancient and medieval doctrine, traces its path through German thought, and explains its relevance to modern hermeneutic theory. His work unfolds in two parts, as an expansive intellectual history and as a close analysis and commentary on source texts on the inner word, from Augustine to Gadamer. As such, this book serves as an indispensable guide and reference for hermeneutics and the intellectual traditions out of which it arose, as well as an original theoretical statement in its own right. “Consummately researched, lucidly written, and persuasively argued throughout, __The Inner Word_ _succeeds brilliantly in bringing to light this neglected but pivotal matter in Gadamer’s work. Arthos is learned in the best ‘humanist’ way, for he succeeds in creating something new of his own that will speak eloquently to all of us.” —_Walter Jost, University of Virginia_ “Gadamer suggests that the Christian idea of incarnation is a key to his hermeneutics, but does not explain his position in a detailed or systematic manner. Arthos brings his considerable knowledge of hermeneutics and rhetoric to bear on Gadamer's insight, recounting the rich intellectual history to which Gadamer gestures, and providing an extended and detailed exegesis of this pivotal point in the third part of _Truth and Method_. Gadamer's account of 'linguisticality,' Arthos explains, can best be understood through his use of a complex metaphor—the ‘inner word.’ Arthos matches his erudition with clear and clean prose, and his account exemplifies, rather than just describes, Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy. Any scholar interested in Gadamer's philosophy should have this book on his or her shelf.” —_Francis J. Mootz III, William S. Boyd Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law_ “Arthos's strength lies for me in his careful reading of the sources. He effectively commands the literature on the subject. This work shows in a sophisticated way the legacy of trinitarian theology for philosophical hermeneutics. The very complex task of illuminating the phenomenon of the _verbum interius _and indicating its centrality for philosophical hermeneutics is accomplished by John Arthos with great sensitivity to the subject matter.” —_Andrzej Wiercinski, The International Institute for Hermeneutics_. (shrink)

IN THE PLATONIC TRADITION, the term "participation" signifies the fundamental relationship of both structure and dependence in the dialectic of the many in relation to the One and of the different in relation to the Identical, whereas in Christian philosophy it signifies the total dependence of the creature on its Creator. The term participation has played an extensive role in Patristic and medieval speculation.

In contemporary political discourse, the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric often undergirds philosophical analyses of "democracy" both at home and abroad. This is nowhere better articulated than in Jacques Derrida's Rogues, in which he describes Islam as the only religious or theocratic culture that would "inspire and declare any resistance to democracy". Curiously, Derrida attributes the failings of democracy in Islam to the lack of reference to Aristotle's Politics in the writings of the medieval Muslim philosophers. This paper aims to (...) analyze this gross misconception of Islamic philosophy and illuminate the thoroughgoing influence the Muslim philosophers had on their Christian successors, those who are so often credited as foundations of Western political philosophy. In so doing, I compare the ideal states presented by Averroes and Dante – in which Aristotelian influence is intimately interlaced – and offer an analysis thereof as heralds of what we might call the secularization of the political, inspiring those democratic values that Derrida believes to be absent in the rich philosophy of the Middle Ages. (shrink)

The art of interpretation has traditionally been an integral part of medical practice, but little attention has been devoted to its theory. Hermeneutics or the study of interpretation has grown as a methodological interest primarily within the humanities. Borrowing from the medieval fourfold sense of scripture, which organizes interpretive activity both logically and comprehensively, I propose a hermeneutical model of clinical decision-making. According to the model, a patient is analogous to a literary text which may be interpreted on (...) four levels: (1) the literal facts of the patient's body and the literal story told by the patient, (2) the diagnostic meaning of the literal data, (3) the praxis (prognosis and therapeutic decisions) emanating from the diagnosis, and (4) the change effected by the clinical encounter in both the patient's and clinician's life-worlds. The model is illustrated through application to a medical case. (shrink)

Objetiva-se neste artigo apresentar a religião à luz da fenomenologia hermenêutica heideggeriana, cujo centro é a faktische Lebenserfahrung , elaborada por Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) nos primórdios de sua obra. Para atingir esse objetivo, serão tomadas três obras do filósofo alemão: Phänomenologie des Religiösen Leben s , de 1920-21; Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles , de 1921-22; e Ontologie. Hermeneutik der Faktizität , de 1923. Delas serão inferidos os conceitos de fenomenologia, de hermenêutica e de facticidade, que fundamentam outros conceitos importantes, tais (...) como mundo, história, fenômeno e experiência. Em seguida, será apresentado o modo como, em três experiências cristãs, o filósofo desenvolve esses conceitos na análise da religião: as cartas paulinas aos Gálatas e aos Tessalonicenses, o livro X das Confissões de Agostinho e a mística medieval. Com isso, conclui-se que a religião é experiência religiosa, desenvolvida em meio à vida fática, com todas as suas tensões, inquietações e projeções. A religião é, então, experiência do divino no locus fático da vida em que a existência encontra seu próprio sentido. Palavras-chave : Fenomenologia. Hermenêutica. Faktische Lebenserfahrung .: This article aims to present religion in the light of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, based on the faktische Lebenserfahrung developed by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) in the early writings of its work. To achieve this goal, three works of the German philosopher will be taken into account: Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens from 1920-21, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles de 1921-22 e Ontologie. Hermeutik der Faktizität de 1923. From these works, it will be inferred concepts of phenomenology, hermeneutics and facticity, that underlie other important concepts such as world, history, phenomenon and experience. Afterwards, the way how this philosopher develops these concepts in the analysis of the Christian religion will be presented through three Christian experiments: the Pauline letters to the Galatians and Thessalonians, the Book X of Augustine Confessions and the medieval mysticism. Finally, this article points out that religion is religious experience developed through factual life, with all its tension, anxieties and projections. Religion is then the experience of the divine in the factual locus of the life in which the existence finds its own meaning. Keywords : Phenomenology. Hermeneutics. Faktische Lebenserfahrung. (shrink)

The aim of my research is to define the religious hermeneutics that can be identified as the specific core of Antaios (1959–71), the German journal directed by the historian of religions Mircea Eliade and by the writer and philosopher Ernst Jünger. Drawing on their insights, we will focus on the philosophical-religious interpretation of Antaios contents: the so-called “mythical-symbolic hermeneutics” is probably the most interesting theoretical theme connected to the Weltanschauung of Antaios. This cultural journal could embody a counter-philosophical (...) perspec­tive that is at the same time intrinsic to Western speculation. This position has repeatedly emerged in many phases of our cultural history. I refer here to mythical-symbolic thought, characterized by an analogical interpretation of the world, whose structure is considered a stratification of truth levels that are complementary ontological levels of reality. This tradition sees reality as a specific kind of totality that allows human perception to take place through the structures of myth and symbols. The theoretical unity of the project is rooted in the mythical-symbolic tradition that, starting from the religious and esoteric pre-philosophical medita­tions, spans Platonic thought, the various neoplatonisms, passes through medieval mysticism and alchemy, reappears in Romanticism and is revealed in the twentieth century by the reflections of the “thinkers of Tradition.” With this paper I would like to highlight the main topics that can be identified from this hermeneutics: speculations about symbol, myth, coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites), archetypes, and ontological pluralism. These are at the core of this paradigm. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on Leo Strauss’s reading of the Republic. I argue that Strauss’s ironic interpretation of the dialogue must be understood in the context of a broader intellectual project which aims to criticize modern and contemporary political philosophy. Strauss’s understanding of Plato is strongly influenced by the hermeneutical principles he draws from his studies of medieval Jewish and Arab philosophy. Reading Plato through Alfarabi, Strauss pursues the idea of the conflict between philosophy and politics, which sheds light, (...) also, on the problem of persecution. Accordingly, he stresses the importance of a peculiar art of reading between the lines. In Strauss’s view, this art is the starting point for recovering the esoteric meaning of the Republic. I will argue that Strauss’s interpretation contradicts several dialogical elements because it does not take into account the broader historical framework of the text. Nevertheless, even with these limitations, Plato scholars should consider Straussian insights, because these offer an untraditional and a non-doctrinal reading of the dialogue. (shrink)

This paper investigates the representation of the Shijing 詩經 and its hermeneutic traditions in Cao Zhi’s 曹植 poetic writings with regard to the reception and utilization of the Shijing at different stages, especially the early third century CE. Cao Zhi not merely appropriated poetic utterances and literary patterns from particular odes but also presented a variety of Shijing-related interpretations, which show correspondences with different hermeneutic traditions that transcended the boundaries of the four main Shijing schools. This case represents a syncretic (...) mode of the reception and utilization of the Shijing within larger intellectual and cultural contexts. The Cao regime, as the new ruling authority in Northern China around the early third century CE, engaged in gathering dispersed literary scholars and cultural legacies, in which the Shijing-related materials and sources played significant roles. Taking Cao Zhi’s syncretic representation of the Shijing and its hermeneutic traditions as an instantiation of these factors, this paper also aims to invite methodological reflections on the traditional and modern studies of the reception of the Shijing, considering its status with both literal significance and hermeneutic diversity in early and medieval China. (shrink)

In his Welcome Message for the XXII World Congress of Philosophy hosted by Seoul National University in August 2008 the President of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP), Peter Kemp, said that—inter alia—it will be an occasion “for rethinking the great philosophical questions.” Amongst there questions how we in the present understand the philosophical past is surely a perennial query before us. In this short paper I will refer to the endeavor of understanding past philosophical thought on its own (...) terms or as presented in a current idiom as “philosophical translation.” The latter can take three forms: logical, analytical, or hermeneutic. This paper will briefly discuss all three forms vis-à-vis modern attempts to understand the medieval concept of “supposition” with special regard to the role metalanguage plays in philosophical translation. (shrink)

Gyula Klima’s distinctive work recovering medieval philosophy has inspired a generation of scholars. Klima’s attention to the distinctive terms, problems, and assumptions that constitute alternative historical conceptual frameworks has informed work in philosophy of language and logic, cognition and philosophical psychology, and metaphysics and theology. This volume celebrates Klima’s project by collecting new essays by colleagues, collaborators, and former students. Covering a wide range of thinkers (Plotinus, Anselm, Aquinas, Buridan, Ockham, and others) and various specifc questions (e.g., about language, (...) cognition, the soul, and God), it is unifed by a common interest in applying historically sensitive, hermeneutically sophisticated, and logically rigorous philosophical interpretation to recover, and appreciate, lost perspectives. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognized that riddles were part of literary and intellectual culture in late-medieval England, and considerable effort has been expended to ponder a prominent handful of late-fourteenth-century writings in Latin and English that use them, including John Ergome's commentary on the Vaticinium of “John of Bridlington,” the seditious vernacular letters circulated during the Rising of 1381, and most famously Piers Plowman, all notorious for the use of peculiar and difficult riddles that flaunt their interpretative challenges and the (...) social power of their hermeneutical barriers. Comparatively vast gaps, however, remain in our knowledge of the range, distinctive modes, and customary contexts of riddles in this period, so that the isolated uses of them that have been studied seem, in May McKisack's words about Piers Plowman, to speak “to us from a forgotten world, drowned, mysterious, irrecoverable.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Introduction to Philosophical HermeneuticsLeon SuretteIntroduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, by Jean Grondin; foreword by Hans-Georg Gadamer, trans. Joel Weinsheimer; xv & 231 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, $25.00.Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, a commissioned study for the Yale Studies in Hermeneutics, provides a comprehensive historical survey of interpretive theory from antiquity to the present. In addition it has a sixty-page bibliography subdivided into no fewer (...) than thirty categories. Unfortunately, the translator, Joel Weinsheimer (himself the translator of Gadamer and general editor of the series) has not added English translations to the bibliography, though he does cite from English translations. The index is inadequate—especially for a quasi-textbook.Grondin sets out to revise and correct the standard view of the development of philosophical hermeneutics: that it began with the formulation of fragmentary hermeneutic rules in the classical and patristic period, was refined with the systematic hermeneutics of Protestant theologians, then broadened into a universal methodology of the human sciences by Schleiermacher and Dilthey, culminating in Hans Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, which extended its reach into a critique of ideology, theory of science, and practical philosophy (p. 3).In place of this story, Grondin presents a single aperçu, “the ancient and perhaps antiquated doctrine of the verbum interius: the ‘inner word’ that is never spoken but nevertheless resounds in everything that is said,” and which he traces to the Stoics via St. Augustine (p. 119). Grondin reveals in his preface that he learned of the centrality of the inner word from Gadamer himself in a Heidelberg pub in the fall of 1988 while he was working on this book (pp. xiii–xiv). Gadamer told him that the claim to universality of philosophical hermeneutics is founded on the recognition of the primordiality of the inner word, to which the uttered word must strive to be adequate (pp. xiv and 123). This interior meaning can never be fully grasped, but it nonetheless provides a prophylactic against relativism. As Grondin puts it in a happy phrase, “original meaning... remains at best the asymptote of understanding, the telos that the interpreter is trying to reach behind the words” (p. 127). In this way philosophical hermeneutics turns philosophy away from epistemology—the concern with the outside, that to which language points, its propositional content—toward hermeneutics—the concern with that from which language emerges, “the conversation of the soul with itself” (p. 139), and the question (p. 119). If Grondin’s account is accepted, Richard Rorty is explicitly renouncing Gadamer when he asserts in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (p. 21) that “it is essential to my view that we have no pre-linguistic consciousness to which language needs to be adequate.”The historical survey is broken down into seven chapters: the first four cover [End Page 249] Classical, Patristic, Protestant, Romantic, and Historicist hermeneutics. Heidegger, Gadamer have one each, while Betti, Habermas, and Derrida are discussed in the last chapter. The historical survey is subdivided into authors too numerous to list. Grondin’s explication is uniformly clear and cogent; both novices and experts will find material for thought in his story.Grondin might be faulted for ignoring the Dutch, Italian, and English humanists, and for leaving Paul Ricoeur largely out of account. The only post-Medieval non-Germans to receive extended consideration are Emilio Betti and Jacques Derrida; the former because his hermeneutic theory precedes Gadamer’s by a few years, and the latter because he is a Heideggerean.Grondin sees deconstruction as “a regression into the propositional logic of metaphysics that dominated the entire West” because it is founded on a destructive critique of propositional logic—whereas Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics is founded upon its replacement by the doctrine of the verbum interius (p. 138). Interestingly, he is also hostile to “historicism,” which—in contrast to Karl Popper—he sees as a positivistic effort to overcome the historicity of understanding (pp. 107–11).Leon SuretteUniversity of Western OntarioCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

We use a graphic formalism to make explicit differences in the interpretation of temporal relations in natural-language text. Out of the panoply of computational representation methods for time or tense, we select Petri nets, and discuss why. We illustrate their potential for semantics and for sign theorists, by analyzing how some late antique and medieval exegeses understood the narrative of Moses and Pharaoh's magicians, and the former's rod swallowing up the rods of the other ones, once these rods had (...) been turned into crocodiles or snakes. We extend the treatment to another situation concerning the semantics of eating and being eaten. (shrink)

In this essay, the gradual transition from ancient "history of the philosophers" to modern "history of philosophy" is presented according to its essential steps and in the light of the dialectic between tradition and innovation that characterizes any philosophical dialogue considered in a diachronic sense. At the same time, however, the essay raises the question of the sense according to which it is nowadays still possible to think of a "history of philosophy" as a research activity distinct both from philosophical (...) hermeneutics and from strictly historical research, such as the one carried out by intellectual historyIl graduale passaggio dall'antica "storia dei filosofi" alla moderna "storia della filosofia" viene qui ricostruito nelle sue fasi essenziali, alla luce della dialettica fra tradizione e innovazione, che caratterizza il dialogo filosofico inteso in senso diacronico. Ma in che senso è ancora possibile, oggi, parlare di una "storia della filosofia" distinta sia dall'attività filosofico-ermeneutica sia dalla ricerca strettamente storica, qual è quella condotta dalla Intellectual history? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:716 BOOK REVIEWS phies for each section (20 in all); (2) the summaries of major conclusions at the end of many chapters; (2) the explanations of how one body of texts (or its traditions) has been re-read (i.e., re-worked) by later texts; and (4) how one body of texts (e.g., the Psalms), provides for understanding a certain perspective other parts of the Old Testament (e.g., the Pentateuch). Some shortcomings (...) are evident. He relies heavily on the prophets for guiding insights, while law, priesthood, temple, and blessing play minor roles. Is this really faithful to the canonical shape of the Old Testament in its pre-Christian witness~ I find particularly inadequate the treatment of purity laws (p. 86) and priestly roles (pp. 150-53), and suspect the author needs to apply a hermeneutics of suspicion to his own Protestant presuppositions! In a similar way, the decalogue gets extended attention because Childs sees its theology as relevant to modern questions of violence, war, etc.; but he never seriously wrestles with those counter-passages whose theology encourages a divine warrior or a conquest motif. A similar problem arises when he ends the book with the theme of "Life under Promise." This is a judicious choice for the summarizing theme of the Old Testament and includes treatment of judgment versus salvation,.eschatology, messianic hope, the promise of the land, and eternal life. But it lacks any reference to liturgy and temple as symbols of hope, the book of the law, or the commandments of Torah, and no mention at all of the " blessing " theology of P that informs the whole Old Testament from Genesis 1 onwards. Clearly Childs has begun an important project, but much more clarity and balance is still needed in his continuing work during the years ahead. Washington Theological Union Silver Spring, Maryland LAWRENCE BOADT, C.S.P. Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives. Edited by TAMAR RUDAVSKY. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1985. Pp. ix + 299. $54 (cloth). Since this book originated from revised papers and commentaries presented at a conference (held at the Ohio State University on March 3 and 4, 1982.), it is not surprising to find that the completed edition displays wide variety both in its subject matter and in the quality of the chapters. The chapters reflect the quality of papers very often presented at conferences -some are excellent, others are not. In addition, some chapters deal BOOK REVIEWS 717 with problems and solutions which help significantly to advance medieval scholarship, while the problems and solutions raised in other chapters do. not add much to medieval research; indeed, some chapters seem to present arguments lacking both in plausibility and in an understanding of the dominant spirit of medieval thought. The book is divided into three specific parts which deal with Islamic, Jewish, and Christian authors respectively, and the chapters in each part are arranged in historical order. There is also an introduction and an extensive bibliography. In chapter 1, Calvin Normore gives a helpful, but tediously written, introduction and overview of the logical and epistemological problems which were involved in medieval discussions of divine omniscience and omnipotence. Chapter 2 focuses upon Boethius's account of the nature of contingency, and adopts a view which i;e:fl.ects a misunderstanding both of Boethius and of the theological spirit of medieval thought in general. Ignoring sage comments from Richard Sorabji (see p. 49, footnote 68), Norman Kretzmann argues that for Boethius free human choice is the source of all contingency. How the Christian, Boethius, could so badly confuse human choice with divine choice, Kretzmann fails to explain. Chapters 3-6 constitute Part Two of the text and contain some of the most scholarly research in the book. In chapters 3 and 4, Josef Van Ess, rightly noting the juridical foundations of Mu'tazilite thought, examines wrongdoing and divine omnipotence in the fragmentary work of Abu Ishaq An-Nazzam. His discussion is particularly helpful in its treatment of the Islamic understanding of God as not physei agathos, but good merely by doing what is good. This understanding is a necessary element for any sound grasp... (shrink)

Scholarship in Heideggerian philosophy can be broadly differentiated into three groups, which evolved in the European and Anglo-American discourses after WWII, namely, first a transcendental (idealist Kantian) approach; second, an Aristotelian approach; and third, a Christian approach to Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein and his fundamental ontology. All of these basic positions are a result of Heidegger’s philosophy on his way to Being and Time (1927) which he developed both in his broad ranging and fascinating lecture courses in Freiburg, where he (...) taught as Husserl’s assistant between 1917 and 1923, and in Marburg, where he taught between 1923 and 1927 (before he returned to Freiburg in 1928 as Husserl’s successor). Interestingly, the analytic reception of Heidegger focuses on Heidegger’s main work Being and Time, whereas the European and “Continental” discourse is oriented towards larger issues, which include philosophical anthropology, theology, hermeneutics, and the history of philosophy. McGrath’s study belongs to the theologically motivated studies on Heidegger’s phenomenology and ontology and thereby contributes to the recent renewed interest in Heidegger’s early philosophy, which arose after his early lecture courses were published in his Collected Works and after it became clear that Heidegger’s way to Being and Time (and his later thinking) not only was heavily influenced by Scholasticism, especially by Duns Scotus, but also by Augustine, Eckhart, and Luther, all of which took effect before Heidegger encountered Husserl’s phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism or Aristotle’s philosophy. The greatness of Being and Time is indeed a result of the ingenious transformation of all these sources into something new. (shrink)

Carolingian Biblical Culture John J. CONTRENI Qui sim nosse uolens, scito Bibliotheca dicor El ueteris legis ius ueho siue nouae. Ne me sperne, precor, ...

A considerable part of the work of Brentano from his youth to the end of his life is concerned with the thought of Aristotle. His peculiar way to access Aristotle makes of Brentano a rather eccentric figure among the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s Aristotelian scholarship. On the one hand, he doesn’t reject emphasizing the use of philological and historical resources in order to understand ancient texts and indeed he makes extensive use of them himself; on the other hand, he (...) believes that the main guide for the study of ancient philosophy should be a philosophical hermeneutics. Therefore, he develops a sharp criticism against Zeller and other scholars. Is for this reason that Brentano considered medieval scholastics as more appropriate interpreters of classical philosophy than them, in particular Aquinas. In our remarks, we will seek to review the main features of the method for interpreting Aristotle defended by Brentano. (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, she also contextualizes contemporary developments (...) within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of Social Science will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)

In these papers Duclow views the thought of Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus through the lens of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. He highlights the interplay of creativity, symbolic expression and language, interpretation and silence as they comment on the mind's work in naming God. This work itself becomes mystical theology when negation opens into a silent awareness of God's presence, from which the Word once again 'speaks' within the mind. Comparative studies with Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Anselm and Hadewijch suggest the (...) book's wider implications for medieval philosophy and theology. (shrink)

This article intends to offer a general presentation of the way in which Saint Thomas Aquinas proceeded in his exegesis of sacred texts. The author concentrates on one of Aquinas’ most estimated biblical commentaries, his Lectura on the Gospel according to St. John. Aquinas combines great theological insight with an incipient development of some literary techniques. In his hermeneutics, he emphasizes the priority of the literal sense of Scripture, although this thesis does not lead him to present a purely (...) natural interpretation. The supernatural mystery of God belongs to the literal sense of Scripture. This is why God, as the principal author of Scripture, might have intended to express different truths even within a single passage. (shrink)

The article presents and analyzes fragments of the story of Saint Praxedes, leader of a domestic church in 1st century in Rome, and their resignification over the centuries, mainly under Pope Paschal I, in the context of church and women history. The research is based on hagiographic stories written in the 5th and 13th centuries, in visualities built in the 9th and 13th centuries, and in commentaries of theorists of the areas of theology, history, and ancient and medieval arts. (...) Exegetically and hermeneutically, it weaves "continuity webs" between Saint Praxedes' ecclesial functions as a missionary-deacon and the diaconal and apostolic missionary leadership of women in Rom 16.1-16. It contextualizes historically the reconstructions of Saint Praxedes' images, of the imagination and devotion of holy martyrs into political religious fights and conflicts, both internal and external. It elaborates and actualizes considerations about sanctity and spirituality of Christian socio-ecclesial ministries and praxis, demonstrating the indispensable participation and leadership of women. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the philosophical and cultural analysis of postmodern philosophy on the basis of the Hegelian methodology, Heidegger's philosophy of language, structural psychoanalysis, deconstructionism, hermeneutics, universal ethics and philosophy of dialogue. The article substantiates the thesis that postmodernism as a model of theoretical reflection is autonomous with regard to liberalism and relativism with the concept of a "French school", which has an anti-liberal orientation and corresponds to the conservative Christian attitudes imposed by implicit ontological meanings. The (...) medieval ontological "nuclei" of postmodernism are concepts: "Real" by J. Lacan, "Archepism" by J. Derrida, "Schizoid" by J. Deleuze, "language reconfiguration" by P. Ricker. Thus, freed from the stereotypes of relativity, postmodernism appears as a third alternative in opposition to the European choice between liberalism and radicalism. The double standard extends to the attitude of liberals to radical currents in crisis processes. Initially, liberal leaders take an overwhelming majority in right-wing nationalism, using it as a tool to support the status quo of capitalism, a means of distracting the masses from real problems, and a mechanism of intimidation. When the mass is intimidated enough, it is proposed to liberalism as "a source of defacing" as the "only alternative". We can talk about the artificial situation of identifying the choice of Fa versus Antifa for the subject who is forced to choose between "purse and life" - between multiculturalism and radical nationalism The key task of structural psychoanalysis is not only the returning of the conflict to its original place, that is, the disclosure of the deep-seated class traumas of the capitalist neoliberal world itself, according to S. Zizek and other representatives of the Slovenian school, but also - the separation of the philosophy of postmodernism as a spiritual phenomenon from political projects of neoliberalism and multiculturalism, which until recently were considered an applied dimension of postmodern politics and promoted the introduction into the social practice of the vicious circle "liberalism - nationalism liberalism" - a circle that does not provide choice and which excludes from its own semiosfery any other values: ethical and dialogical, modern, conservative, religious, international, non-system Left and others. In order to realize this task, postmodernism must be considered under the other viewpoint, depriving it of the stereotypes of "relativism", "cynicism" and "enlightenment", that is, it is necessary to demonstrate that the authentic core of postmodern philosophy is far from multicultural indifference of "post-truth" and includes expressive ontological motives. The double goal of our study: to carry out a critical rethinking of postmodernism as a form of manifestation of a conservative attitude based on hereditary archetypes of the Middle Ages and Modernism, and to show that postmodernism as a philosophy is not the cause of the tragic self-denial of postmodernism as an applied measurement of multiculturalism, that multiculturalism with its vicious circles of relativity, devastation and radicalism is separate from the phenomenon of postmodernism and belongs to the "shock" project of American liberal democracy, and not to "French school" Moreover, the School of Post-Structuralism of the Sorbonne, as the basis of postmodernism, is the descendant of the Marxist school of "new left" in Frankfurt and its meaning is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-liberal. By combining among themselves in a single interdisciplinary field the classical philosophy of M. Heidegger's language, J. G. Derrida's "grammar", G. Lacan's structural psychoanalysis, J. Habermas's universal ethics, J. de Gaulle's schizodiscourse, and hermeneutics and the philosophy of P. Ricker's dialogue, we have shown that In the semantic field of postmodernism there are ontological kernels of conservatism, which approximate this philosophical model to medieval traditionalist thought and make the border between modern and postmodern very conditional. The return of postmodernism to the status of the philosophy of being and the liberation of the French school from the stereotypes of "lack" and "loseness" is necessary in order to protect postmodernism from accusations of cynicism, relativism and "emptiness", since these allegations are, firstly, based on the mixing of postmodernism with liberal irony, and, secondly, often serve as an excuse for the revival of various kinds of fundamentalist aspirations. We have shown that liberalism, by provoking through the irony of the identification of the "illusion", initially contributes to the development of radical movements, and then, when they emerge from the symbolic control, they remove them from the agenda as "fascist", opposing them to themselves. There is a closed vicious circle of impossibility to choose between "Fa and Antifa". Our work was an attempt to remove postmodernism from this circle. (shrink)